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Your dishwasher can look spotless and still send mold, old food, and bacteria right back onto your dishes because the spots that cause it are ones nobody ever shows you. A $3 bottle of hydrogen peroxide handles almost every one, and
Discover 11 dishwasher fixes using hydrogen peroxide to save money and improve cleaning, including a $500-saving tip on hidden parts.
Key Takeaways
- Hydrogen peroxide is a cheap, non-toxic cleaning agent that targets grease, mold, and bacteria in dishwashers.
- Many dishwasher issues stem from overlooked parts like the rinse aid dispenser, heating element, and sump.
- Testing peroxide fizz is critical to avoid wasting time with ineffective cleaning.
- Vinegar is the best solution for mineral deposits on glassware, not peroxide.
- Routine maintenance with peroxide and proper storage habits can prevent expensive dishwasher repairs.
What the video covers
- Hydrogen peroxide effectively cleans mold, old food, and bacteria in hidden dishwasher spots.
- Test hydrogen peroxide fizz to ensure it is active before use; expired peroxide is ineffective.
- Clean the rinse aid dispenser to prevent clogging that causes spotty, wet dishes.
- Remove baked-on food and plastic from the heating element to improve drying and eliminate odors.
- Clean the sump and food chopper under the filter to prevent grit and sludge from redepositing on dishes.
- Use vinegar to remove hard water mineral film from cloudy glasses; peroxide does not work for this.
- The video highlights a major hidden dishwasher part that often causes costly repairs or replacements.
- Hydrogen peroxide can clean inside cups, lids, and straws where dishwasher spray cannot reach.
- Regularly sanitize sponges and clean the dishwasher drain to prevent bad odors and bacteria buildup.
- Proper storage of hydrogen peroxide keeps it effective for ongoing dishwasher maintenance.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to Hidden Dishwasher Problems
- 00:57Why Hydrogen Peroxide Works and the Fizz Test
- 02:08Cleaning the Rinse Aid Dispenser
- 04:12Cleaning the Heating Element
- 06:20Cleaning the Sump and Food Chopper
- 07:31Fixing Cloudy Glasses with Vinegar
- 08:32Overview and Guide Promotion
- 09:20Costly Repairs and Hidden Part Explained
- 10:28Float Mechanism Check and Cleaning Cups/Lids
- 12:30Sanitizing Sponges and Cleaning Drains
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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there are 11. Number [music] six is the hidden part that gets perfectly good machines hauled to the curb for $500.
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And number seven is the mold your family is probably drinking through. It is not magic. It is just chemistry. And once you know where to aim it, you stop replacing things that were never broken.
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Quick refresher on why one cheap bottle does all of this. Whether this is your first of these videos or your tenth, hydrogen peroxide is just water with one extra oxygen atom attached. And that spare atom is what fizzes through
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grease, mold, and bacteria before it breaks back down into plain water and air. Nothing toxic, nothing left behind.
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And that fizz matters more than you would think, which is exactly where we start. [music] So, let's get into it.
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Number one, the fizz test and why the peroxide did nothing last time. If you tried some of this before and it barely did anything, do not blame the method yet. Nine times out of 10, the peroxide itself was the problem. But hydrogen
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peroxide does not last forever, and almost nobody realizes it. It slowly turns back into plain water while it sits in the cupboard. And that happens faster if the bottle has been open a while or kept somewhere warm or in the
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light. Flat dead peroxide cleans about as well as water from the tap, which is to say, not at all. So before you trust it on anything in your dishwasher, test it. Pour a little onto something greasy or just [music] onto a stain in the
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sink. If it bubbles and fizzes, it is alive and working. [music] If it just sits there flat and still, it is finished and you need a fresh bottle, which runs you about $3. That fizz is the oxygen doing the actual cleaning.
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[music] So, no bubbles means nothing is happening. It is the first thing to check and almost nobody does. Test the bottle first and you will never again waste 20 [music] minutes scrubbing with water that forgot it was peroxide. And
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once you know yours is alive, the first place to aim it is a spot the first video never touched. [music] Number two, the rinse aid dispenser.
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Nobody ever cleans. [music] Right next to the soap cup on your door is a second little compartment with a cap on it, the rinse aid dispenser.
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[music] And almost nobody opens it up to clean it. So why does a small dispenser matter [music] so much? Rinse aid is what helps water sheet off your dishes so they dry without spots and the dispenser [music] slowly releases it through a small
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opening during the cycle. Over time, that opening and the cap [music] around it gum up with a sticky, crusty residue.
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And once it is clogged, the rinse aid either stops coming out or leaks out all at once. [music] Either way, you get spotty, streaky glasses and dishes that come out wet, and you blame the machine or the rinse
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aid brand when the dispenser [music] was just blocked. Pop the cap open. If you see that gummy buildup around the seal in the opening, soak a cloth in hydrogen peroxide and lay it over the whole dispenser for a few minutes to soften
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the crust. Then, wipe [music] it clean. Work the little flap or cap open and closed so it moves freely [music] and clear out the opening itself. Now the rinse aid meters out the way it is supposed to. Your glasses come out clear
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and your dishes actually dry. It is a 2-minute fix for a problem people spend money on special drying products to [music] chase. And speaking of things at the bottom of the machine getting hot, number three is one people do not even
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realize they can [music] clean. Number three, the heating element baking gunk at the bottom. If you look at the floor of your dishwasher tub, a lot of machines have a metal coil running around the bottom. That is the heating
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element, and it does two jobs. It heats the water during the wash, and it heats the air to help dry your dishes at the end. The trouble starts with what lands on it.
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[music] Bits of food and sometimes a piece of plastic that fell off the rack land on that element and bake on hard because it gets hot. [music] Baked on food turns into a burnt crust that smells every time the machine heats up. And melted
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plastic can actually give off a nasty [music] odor and smoke. Worse, a coil crusted in burnt gunk does not transfer heat as well. [music] So, your dishes come out wetter and your water does not get as hot. Wait until the element is
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completely cool. Then wipe it down with a cloth soaked in hydrogen peroxide to [music] break down the baked-on grease and food and gently work off any crust.
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[music] Be careful with it. Do not gouge at it or bend it. Just clean the surface. And if there is a blob of melted plastic on there, let it harden and peel it off carefully rather than scraping like mad.
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A clean element heats properly again. The burning smell goes away and your drying improves for free, but the element is only the part you can see.
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Number four is the filth hiding in the pit right underneath your filter. Number four, the sump and the chopper under the filter. In the first video, you cleaned the round filter that twists out of the bottom, [music] but the
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filter is not the dirtiest part down there. Under and around where that filter sits is a deeper well called the sump. And that is where all the water collects and drains out from. Many dishwashers also have a small food
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chopper or grinder down there that breaks up the bits of food. And that whole area down below [music] the filter is where the heaviest sludge, glass grit, and rotten food actually settle.
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If that [music] sump is packed with grit and debris, some of it gets picked back up and sprayed onto your dishes during the wash, which is why you sometimes find sand or little food specks on supposedly clean dishes. With the filter
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already removed, reach down into the sump and pull out any large debris by hand, and you will often be surprised at what is down there. Bits of glass, chunks of food, a bread tag. Then pour a cup of hydrogen peroxide into the sump
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[music] and let it foam for 10 minutes. That kills the bacteria and loosens the greasy film coating everything. And you wipe out what you can reach with a cloth. Rinse it by running a little hot water through. Now the water draining
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out of your machine is not passing through a pit of old sludge on the way and that grit stops ending up back on your plates. Clean this a couple of times a year along with the filter. And once your dishes are actually coming out
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clean, there is one thing peroxide genuinely cannot fix and you need to know how to tell.
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Number five, cloudy glasses and the one minute test that saves you money. If your glasses come out foggy or hazy, [music] one quick test tells you exactly what to do about it. Wipe a little white vinegar on one or dunk it for a minute,
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then rinse and [music] look. Most of the time, the cloudiness lifts right off and the glass comes back clear and bright.
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That means [music] it was only a hard water mineral film and vinegar clears that away every time. Quick heads up, this is the one job peroxide does not do because the film is mineral, not grease or bacteria. So, vinegar is your tool
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here instead. But if the vinegar does not clear it, that tells you something [music] just as useful. It means the haze is etching. Tiny permanent pitting in the glass from years of too much detergent and scalding hot cycles.
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You cannot polish etching out of a glass, but you can stop it spreading to the rest of your set by using a little less detergent and skipping the hottest setting on anything delicate. Either way, 1 minute and a splash of vinegar
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tells you whether to clean the glass or protect [music] the others instead of tossing them out and guessing. And that was the last of the quick fixes because number six is the big one. Before I show it to you, one quick thing. Everything
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am walking you through here is just a piece of what I have packed into my [music] hydrogen peroxide guides. Every cheap fix for every room in the house in one place. The [music] link is down in the description. And if you are watching
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this on your TV, grab your phone and scan the QR code on my channel page.
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Now, number six, the big one, the tip that saves the most money in this whole video.
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Number six, the stuck float that gets a working machine thrown away. This is the $500 one, and it is the moment a repair man says the words that cost you the most. It usually goes like this. Your dishwasher runs, the panel lights up, it
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makes all its usual noises, but the dishes come out dry and dirty, or it never seems to actually fill and wash.
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So, you call someone. They poke around for 10 minutes and deliver the verdict. The water inlet valve is bad. And on a machine this age, honestly, you are better off just replacing the whole thing. And there goes $500 for a new
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dishwasher over one that was never broken. What is actually wrong is far simpler, and you can [music] check it in 2 minutes with no tools at all. Open the door and look at the floor of the tub near the front for a small plastic dome
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or cover. Underneath it is a part called the float, and it rises up as the tub fills with water and tells the machine when to stop [music] filling. And this is where it gets simple. If a piece of
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food, a chunk of plastic off the rack, or a buildup of mineral gunk gets [music] that float stuck in the up position, the machine thinks the tub is already full, so it never lets any water in at all. No water means nothing washes
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and the dishes come out dirty. Lift that cover off. It usually just pulls straight up and clear out any debris around the float. Wipe it [music] and the housing with hydrogen peroxide to kill the slime that can hold it down and
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make sure the float moves [music] up and down freely and drops back on its own.
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That one thing fixes a huge share of these machines. There is a second spot too, a small mesh screen where the water line feeds into the valve which clogs with sediment over the years and chokes the water down to a trickle. [music]
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That one you do not touch while everything is live. Shut the dishwasher off at the breaker and close the water supply valve under the sink first. And if that part is beyond you, that is the one piece genuinely worth a phone call.
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But the float, the thing behind most of these, is completely free. It takes 2 minutes and it is the entire difference between a quick wipe and a $500 replacement for a machine that just needed something moved out of the way.
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And once it is running again, here is a spot the dishwasher itself will never clean [music] no matter what you do.
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Number seven, the cups and lids your dishwasher cannot clean inside. Think about the water bottles, the travel mugs, the kids sippy cups, and the lids that go with them. You put them in the dishwasher, they come out looking clean,
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and you assume they are. But there is a catch you cannot see. The dishwasher only sprays across surfaces it can reach, and it simply cannot get inside a narrow straw up into the rubber valve of a sippy cup lid or into the tight groove
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where a travel mug gasket sits. Those are exactly the warm, damp, dark little spaces that grow black mold, and people drink right through them every day. Pull the rubber gasket out of your travel mug lid and look at the channel underneath
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it. Pop the valve out of a sippy cup lid and check the [music] inside. If you see black or pink gunk, that is mold and bacteria the dishwasher never [music] touched. So, take all those small removable parts, the gaskets, the
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valves [music] the straws, and drop them in a bowl of hydrogen peroxide, enough to cover them.
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[music] Let them soak for 15 minutes. The peroxide gets into every space the dishwasher spray [music] could not, and it fizzes the mold and bacteria out of the grooves. Push a cotton swab or a thin brush through any straws. Rinse
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[music] everything and let it air dry fully before you put it back together. Now, the parts your family actually drinks through are clean all the way down into the grooves the dishwasher spray could never reach.
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And there is one thing in your kitchen [music] filthier than any of this and you use it to clean everything else.
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Number eight, the sponge and dish dirtier than the sink. [music] This next one is a little uncomfortable.
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The sponge or the dish brush you use to [music] clean everything is very often the single most bacteria covered object in [music] your entire kitchen. It stays wet. It lives in food residue. [music] And it sits in a warm room, which is the
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perfect setup for bacteria to multiply into the millions. And this is the part that surprises people. You have probably heard you can just microwave [music] a sponge or run it through the dishwasher to sanitize it. But research has
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actually found that barely works [music] because the toughest bacteria survive and repopulate it within days.
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So every time you wipe a plate or the [music] counter, you are not really cleaning. You are spreading that around and rinsing it under the tap does almost nothing to fix it. So once or twice a week, give your sponge or brush a real
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sanitizing soak. [music] Drop it in a cup or bowl with enough hydrogen peroxide to soak all the way through it and [music] leave it for 10 minutes. The peroxide fizzes down into the bacteria trapped inside all those little holes and kills [music] them. In
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a way, a quick rinse never will. After that, it breaks down to nothing but water and oxygen, so there is nothing harmful left behind in the sponge.
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Squeeze it out and let it dry. Do this regularly [music] and replace the sponge when it starts to smell no matter what, because past a certain point, it is beyond [music] saving. A clean sponge means you are actually cleaning with it
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instead of painting bacteria across every surface in the kitchen. And speaking of where all this dirty water ends up, number nine is a spot people call a plumber [music] for.
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Number nine, the disposal and drain your dishwasher empties into. [music] Most people never connect these two things.
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Your dishwasher does not drain into some private [music] pipe of its own. In most kitchens, the dishwasher hose empties into your garbage disposal or into the sink drain right [music] below it, which means they all share the same exit. So,
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if your disposal is full of old rotting food or the drain under your sink is coated in greasy sludge, that gunk sits right where your dishwasher [music] is trying to empty and it causes slow draining backups and a rotten smell that
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drifts straight back up into the machine. You clean the dishwasher spotless and it still stinks because the smell is coming from the drain it shares. So clean that shared exit. Pour a cup of hydrogen peroxide down the garbage disposal and into the sink
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drain. Let it foam and sit for 15 minutes to kill the bacteria and break down the greasy bofilm coating the inside of the pipe. Follow it with plenty of hot water to flush everything through. If you have a disposal, run it
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with cold water for a bit afterward to clear it out. Now, the path your dishwasher drains into is clean, the backups ease up, and that sewer smell stops coming back through a machine you already scrubbed. And once you
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understand all this, you will see why the product they sell you for it is mostly a waste of money.
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Number 10, why the dishwasher cleaner tablets are mostly a waste. Walk down the cleaning aisle and you will find special dishwasher cleaner tablets and bottles, often five or $6 a box, promising to freshen and deep clean your machine. The honest truth is simpler
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than the box makes it sound. Those cleaners are mostly citric acid and a bit of detergent. And when you run one, it does help with mineral scale and some grease on the surfaces the water reaches. But that is the whole limit of
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what they can do. A tablet you toss in and run cannot scrub your filter. It cannot get into the folds of the door seal. [music] It cannot free a stuck float. It cannot reach inside the sump.
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[music] And it cannot clean out the rinse aid cup. In other words, it cannot touch a single one of the spots that actually cause your smell and your dirty dishes because all of those need a hand and a cloth, not a cycle. So, you are
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paying5 or $6 a box for something that only treats the easy part. [music] A $3 bottle of hydrogen peroxide handles the bacteria, the mold, and the smell.
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[music] A cheap jug of white vinegar handles the mineral scale. Between them, they cost less and do more. Save your money on the specialty tablets and put a brown bottle under the sink instead. And that leads straight into the habits that
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keep every bit of this from ever coming back. Number 11, the two habits that keep it all gone. By now you know the real secret that almost none of this is about repairs. [music] It is about a little
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upkeep in the spots nobody shows you. So here are two easy habits that keep your dishwasher clean and running for years.
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[music] First, and this one is free, run your kitchen sink on hot for a few seconds right before you start the dishwasher.
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The reason is simple. Your dishwasher does not heat much water at the very [music] start. It mostly uses whatever comes through the line. And if that first water is the cold water sitting in your pipes, the wash [music] begins
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lukewarm and cleans and sanitizes worse for the whole cycle. Running the hot tap first means [music] the machine fills with genuinely hot water from the start, so it cleans better and kills more with no extra effort. Second, keep your
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hydrogen peroxide alive and handy. [music] Store the bottle in a cool, dark cupboard, not on a sunny window sill, because light and heat are what quietly [music] turn it into plain water. And keep a small spray bottle of it under
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the sink so it is always right there. Every so often, remember the fizz test from number one, so you know it [music] is still working when you reach for it.
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Do those two things and combine them with cracking the door open to dry out that you already know from the first video. And your dishwasher simply never gets [music] to the state where it smells or quits. It just keeps working
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quietly, long past the day the manufacturer expected you to give up and buy a new one.
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That same $3 bottle just quietly did the work of a repair man, a plumber, and half the cleaning aisle on the parts of your dishwasher nobody ever tells you to look at. Most of what breaks in your kitchen was never really broken. It was
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just neglected somewhere out of sight. If you have not seen the first 11 things, the filter, the door seal, and the spray arm trick that started all this, that video is right here.
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Subscribe and stick around [music] because the next one might save you even more. Your wallet will thank you.
Topics:dishwasher repairhydrogen peroxide cleaningdishwasher maintenancekitchen cleaning tipsrinse aid dispenserheating element cleaningdishwasher mold removalcleaning sump dishwashercloudy glasses fixcheap dishwasher fixes
